ENTERTAINMENT Comedian brings act from Iraq to the Funny Farm

Witham got his start at an office Christmas party.
As part of a group of performing comedians traveling throughout Iraq last year, Drake Witham said the stand-up comics were given a list of things by the government not to discuss. In the world of comedy, this is tantamount to telling the kids where the cookie jar is and leaving the room.
"We're comedians, so we went down the checklist and made sure to touch on all of them," said Witham calling from Indianapolis. "I didn't do any Abu Ghraib prison [material] but one of the guys started doing some stuff and we thought this is it. But no one cut his mic."
Tough decision
For Witham, the decision to follow in Bob Hope's USO legacy of entertaining troops overseas wasn't as easy as he had expected. In fact, his brother, a Military Special Forces veteran, offered him money not to go. While things initially went well in Iraq, including performances in Saddam Hussein's former palaces, there was that time a bomb exploded in the distance, shaking the ground while Witham was in the middle of his set.
"That shook me," Witham said. "I looked at our liaison and she didn't move at all, but her eyes didn't look like this was a good thing. Nobody in audience moved, so I just kept going, and I was definitely shaken a little bit, but they were fine about it. They liked watching comedy boy jumping around on stage."
As a former journalist for the Dallas Morning News, Witham has spent the past three years jumping around on stage as an up-and-coming comedian. Oddly enough the lynchpin decision to leave behind the world of journalism for the unstable environment of stand-up comedy came at a newspaper Christmas party when the veteran of a few open-mic nights was asked to perform for his co-workers and higher ups.
Competition winner
"I didn't have really any material, so I did impressions of the editors, and it went really well, except with the editors," Witham said. "After a few months, I decided that's what I wanted to do." The fact that Witham isn't an impressionist makes the story that much more interesting.
Soon, Witham's razor-sharp wit and deadpan delivery caught notice when he won the Seattle Comedy Competition in 2003. He hasn't stopped touring since. Witham appears June 3 and 4 at the Funny Farm Comedy Club in Girard.
While he's not a political comedian per se, the 33-year-old performer is finding plenty of material from his Iraqi adventure. However, it's not as easy as you might think. "It's tough to talk about it in a funny way because you don't want to be making light of it," Witham said. "But I think I've figured out how to do that where I can just share my experiences and still keep the focus on that."